Wyoming Veteran Recounts The Battle Of Iwo Jima [Video]

YouTube user Fred Turner was lucky enough to catch up with a real American hero and Hudson, Wyoming native, Mike Vinich.

Vinich was born in Hudson and attended school in Lander. He says he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps "the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor."

Among his many military stops across the world, he wound up fighting on Iwo Jima in 1945. The 89-year-old explains...

I had thirty seven men under me as a platoon sergeant and only seven of us came back and we were all wounded.  I was shot through both legs under machine gun fire. It tore out six inches of my femur.

Vinich spent eleven months at a hospital in Idaho and then attended the University of Montana. He would later buy and own a grocery store in Fremont County.